I think in a lot of ways my fixation on characters with elastic or stretchy abilities is in some ways an expression of my ADHD. I don't just mean the 'bouncing off the walls' angle either, though that's also a factor
but even as far back as childhood I always struggled with keeping myself contained, 'under control.' I learned young that my enthusiasm and obsessive interest in specific topics were disruptive and unpleasant for others and it often felt like being something of a pressure vessel
that feeling adds up over time. at a certain point the combination of outside pressure to conform and internal pressure to express yourself pushing out makes it feel like your identity is just a thin film separating two completely outsized, tempestuous whorls of stimulus.
identity starts to feel less set, and more like a barrier between an internal reality NOBODY wants to deal with, and external realities you can't actually handle because it's just too much to process. it's hard to cope with!
that's kind of when the 'balloon' metaphor started to take shape for me; it was just an easier way to express the idea of 'I feel like I'm expected to contain huge amounts of feeling and emotion that are in danger of being ruptured by forces I can't control pressing in'
the empowerment, then, is in the fantasy of BEING ABLE to contain it, to be able to grow to -fit- the situation, to be resilient enough that you're capable of managing it with poise and even a kind of grace and coordination
at a certain point I decided I was MORE interested in using this metaphor to push my own growth as a person forward, rather than as an explanation for how I was broken; that's when I started doing more empowering things WITH the idea
this gets into other topics, but it also hits a point I think about a lot: when does a 'kink' become so intrinsic to self-understanding that it ceases actually being one, and instead just becomes, like... a trait, undivorceable from a baseline conception of self?
this happens more often than I think people realize, too. sometimes you realize that, pearl-like, some aspect of your selfhood has coalesced around an undigestible chunk of thought it just can't get rid of or deal with in any other way. and now it's something beautiful to you
@hystericempress No, yeah, this is EXACTLY what happened to me. Like, we've probably talked about how all the hypnosis stuff came STRAIGHT out of unprocessed separation anxiety and recurring nightmares about not being able to get at the "real" personalities of family members who had been Touched By Something Strange... I think that was my first flash on just how fucked up and fragile human identities were and it... yeah, you're you, you can fill in the rest.
